Oblivion Episode 4 - Frozen Pride
by Gabriel Seraph
Summary: This story is inspired by Organization XIII. Great liberties have been taken with names, places, etc. in order to create as original a story as possible. Tim and his new friends continue to bond during an ice storm, unaware that Vexen has created the storm to test the lab's independent generator, but when it goes out, Ansem's plan is left in ruins. AU, with some OC's.
1. Chapter 1

AN: Before reading this story, please read my first three _Oblivion _episodes first ("The New Kid," "Both Sides of the Story," and "Everybody Hates Windmills"), if only so you won't be completely and hopelessly confused about what is going on in this latest episode.

Episode 4 - "Frozen Pride"

Chapter 1

-October 19-

Friday night, 10pm. Wind and rain battered Tim and Axel's bedroom window relentlessly. _Wow, after wind only in the morning, now the wind is coming at night, and with a full-force storm too_, thought Tim, as he examined the black fleece jacket Mom had just bought for him. Axel had received an identical one, as did Rocky. If not for the fact that it had apparently been in the weather forecast for four days now, Tim would have thought that his mother had some kind of prescient powers. _Wouldn't surprise me,_ he thought, remembering how he had been able to make a copy of himself in the water. _At least now it's gonna be too cold for me to use this power_, thought Tim. _But maybe Axel could keep us all warm with his fire hands. _He took one last look out the wet window before lying back on his mattress and going to sleep.

-October 20-

Saturday morning, 7am. Tim was woken up by the buzz of his cell phone in his pocket - he'd not bothered removing his clothes when he went to bed the night before, because it was just too cold. It was so cold, in fact, that the rain had turned to sleet overnight. Thumbing it open, he saw that he'd just gotten a text from Ashley. It read: "Cold day, huh? i thought i'd take u 2 the ice rink 2day. u know how 2 ice skate? i hope so. if not, it'll be fun to see u try! come meet me there, 34366 Carver, 10:00."

Axel yawned and wriggled out from under his sheets. Like Tim, he'd fallen asleep in his regular clothes because of the intense cold. He glanced over at his twin and asked, "Who're you texting?"

Tim nearly fumbled the phone due to the combination of surprise that his brother was awake, and the cold interfering with his grip. "Uh, nobody."

"Really? Trying to hide it from me now, are we?"

"I'm texting Martine Pinay, if you must know," remarked Tim sarcastically. "Now leave me alone."

"Sure you are. Give me that," said Axel, reaching over and grabbing the phone from Tim's hands. His free hand leaped over his mouth in a hopeless attempt to muffle his laughter. "Ice skating? Really? I was right, you are turning into a girl. Remind me to buy you a douche bag for Christmas."

"I certainly will, douchebag," said Tim.

Axel laughed again as he threw Tim's phone back to him. "Well, don't say I didn't warn you, but...you are going to seriously make a fool of yourself. Even more so than usual, if that's possible."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Axel raised his eyebrow. "I don't know how you did it, but you really got away with a lot of shit yesterday. I don't know whose salad you're tossing to do that, but it ain't fooling me. You should at least have gotten detention there, if not suspended. Not that Dad would allow any punishment on you to stand. Hey, even if it was me involved in this, he might have defended me. Any sane person would, right?"

_Depends on how you define "sane," _thought Tim. He didn't really consider his father to be one of the sanest men in the world. Then again, most CEO's were a little skewed off from what was considered "normal." _And really, what is normal anyway?_ Tim added in his head.

"By the way," Axel paused, looking a bit embarrassed, "you guys did great performances yesterday. Way to stick it to the man there. You also got a really great band name too. Lethal Tomatoes, ha! Very creative one." He left the room.

Tim looked out the window again. _Okay, no matter how you define normal, that was most definitely not normal under any meaning or interpretation of the word_.

* * *

Down in the lab, Vexen waved her hands in a circular motion around her head. By doing this regularly every hour or so, she was able to keep the ice storm in constant motion, and the chill in the air remained. Braig was watching the morning news, which was going on and on about the "completely unprecedented" cold snap and snowstorm currently bearing down. Snowstorms on the California coast were extraordinarily rare, and it was the meteorologist's opinion that there would never be such an occurrence again during anybody's lifetime, even if "anybody" were a one-minute-old infant being born right at this moment.

Vexen turned to Ansem, who was sipping hot chocolate while watching the news alongside Braig. "Should I be intensifying the storm yet, dear?"

"Not quite yet," said Ansem. "Let their precious morning news go by first, because nobody's going to miss whatever comes on TV afterwards."

"Like yourself?" asked Vexen, pointing to the TV.

Ansem frowned at her. "I'm only watching because it's fun to see these poor saps trying and failing to make any sense of this. You don't think it's fun, Vexen?"

Vexen sighed, then walked to the elevator so she could get back into the house and get some breakfast. Real breakfast, not the increasingly stale doughnuts and other pastries Ansem kept providing for Braig down in the break room.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

After ten minutes of battling his way through the wind and driving sleet and snow, Tim walked into the ice rink, a brand-new building with a panoramic glass ceiling. With the metallic gray sky above, the ice looked almost like a mirror reflecting the storm clouds. Ashley waved him over to the edge of the ice, holding up a pair of ice-skate blades. "Hey there, Tim. I didn't know if you had skates of your own, so I just brought some blades to attach to your shoes."

"You can actually do that?" Tim asked.

"Well, I figured out how, didn't I?" answered Ashley. "Here, put 'em on already and come join me! Wheeee!" she squealed. Yes, she squealed as she peeled out across the ice. _Well, that's completely out of character for her_, thought Tim. _Ashley doesn't squeal. Not for me, not for anyone._ Tim sat on the edge, attached the blades to the soles of his sneakers, and gingerly stepped down. Amazingly, he was able to gain his footing almost instantly. He stayed frozen in place, afraid to lose his balance. _Maybe that's what Ashley wanted_, thought Tim. _Why else would she have me come up to this freaking ice rink out of the blue?_

Ashley came back around to Tim, having done a lap around the rink already. _Wait a minute, she didn't have that scarf on before. Did she? Okay, note to self: stop trusting senses, they're clearly not working at full capacity. Maybe they've been slowed down by the cold._ "Come on, weenie. Don't wanna risk falling over?"

Tim glared at Ashley for a second before he attempted to push himself forward. As he expected, he lost his balance, but he eventually managed to lever himself back into a standing position. "Okay, I don't wanna do this again," said Tim. "I'm pretty sure one of my ankles might be cracked."

"You'll kinda have to do it again," laughed Ashley. "Look at yourself, you're smack in the middle of the ice!"

Sure enough, Ashley was right. "Oh dear God," moaned Tim. "How did I do that? How am I gonna get out of here?"

Ashley giggled. "You know how you teach a reluctant person to swim? Push 'em into the water! Same basic principle."

Tim frowned. "Well, which would you prefer? Half drowning or falling on your ass in front of the whole damn world?"

"What whole damn world?" asked Ashley. "We're the only ones here! See?" She gestured around to what Tim now realized was a completely empty ice rink.

"What the hell?"

Ashley tilted her head and waved a pair of keys at Tim. "Ah, the joys of being the owner's daughter." She put the keys away. "You feeling less nervous now?"

Tim shook his head. "Look, if I fall on my ass for your personal amusement, will you let me leave?"

"It won't amuse me as much as you think it will," laughed Ashley, "but yes, we can go ahead and leave after you fall on your ass."

Tim fell on his ass. Both of them laughed, hard enough to vibrate the glass ceiling and echo all over the otherwise empty rink.

"How about we do lunch?" asked Ashley. "Tara and Bobby said they'd meet us at Garibaldi's, it's this nice Italian place down the street. They make a mean veal parmigiana. You comin' or what?"

Tim pretended to think it over. "Okay, I'm comin'. Nobody can resist Italian, right?"

Five minutes later, the Lethal Tomatoes sat at a table in Garibaldi's and were poring over the menu. Tim was originally going to order the veal parmigiana suggested by Ashley, but he found something that appealed to him even more - chicken pesto with shaved white truffles. It was insanely expensive (because white truffles were extremely hard to come by in America), but Tim had more than enough money to pay for it.

As the Tomatoes placed their orders, Bobby suddenly said, "Hey look Tim, your brothers are here!"

"My brothers?" Tim looked around. "What-?"

Rocky and Axel were, in fact, walking into Garibaldi's, alongside Xion, Lucien, and Marcus, the last of whom was carrying his laptop. As they were all seated at the table next to the Lethal Tomatoes, Tim turned to Axel and asked, "Hey dude, what are you doing here? Can't see you wanting to hang out with the Green Clubbers."

"Yeah, well, you were already gone by nine, and Mom and Dad had to do some experimental wireless-electricity shit down in Santa Marina, so they left me in charge of Rocky. And Lucien here was left in charge of Xion, so when they wanted to get together to do some Green Club event planning..." Axel's voice trailed off.

Tim pursed his lips slightly. "Yeah, coming from you that's a little too detailed an explanation. You just couldn't find any place else to go hang out with Lucien and you didn't wanna stay out in the cold for so long. That's it, isn't it?"

Axel raised his fist. "You're lucky we're in public, bro."

At this point, the lights unexpectedly went out, as did the TV over the bar.

"Whoa there!" "Who did that?" "What's happening?" Panicked voices filled the restaurant.

"Must be a power outage from the storm," said Tim. He opened his cell phone, but found that he was getting zero reception.

"Dammit, no wi-fi, either," said Marcus, unplugging his laptop from its charger, which was now useless. "Might as well shut this down, it's not gonna last more than half an hour anyway."

The waiter sheepishly came out with the Lethal Tomatoes' lunches, before walking over to the next table. "I apologize, but your lunches are going to be delayed a bit. Rest assured, you will be fed, but the boss is just going upstairs to his apartment to break out the propane ovens."

"You mean, like for camping?" asked Xion.

"Yeah, those," said the waiter, who then hurried off into the kitchen.

* * *

In the underground lab beneath the townhouse, Vexen waved her hands around her head again to intensify the storm enough to knock out the power. "Done," she said. "Independent generators are on-"

And with that, the lights went out instantly.

"-line?" Vexen's voice petered out slowly.

"Oh shit," cursed Braig.

"'Oh shit' is exactly right," concurred Ansem.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

After five minutes of sitting in the almost-complete dark (which was broken only by the slate-gray daylight filtering through the distant front window, and the candles that the waiters were busily lighting on each table), the kids just stayed silent, unable to think of anything else to do. Until Tim decided to break the ice (as it were) by actually chewing the ice cubes from his water glass. After he crunched two of them into easily swallowable fragments, he asked nobody in particular, "Anyone else find it bizarre that they put ice in our water glasses on a cold-as-hell day like this? Anyone?"

Lucien actually laughed out loud at this one. When he'd calmed himself down enough, he answered, "No, because it isn't a cold-as-hell day. You want a cold-as-hell day? Go to Palm Springs on the summer solstice. That's the definition of a cold-as-hell day, buddy."

Xion blinked, then asked "But isn't that hot as hell, not cold as hell?"

"It's cold as hell," Axel jumped in loudly, "because whatever temperature it is in Palm Springs in the middle of summer, that's as cold as hell gets."

Tara laughed. "Well, hell. Might as well jump into this randomistic discussion about the climate in hell if that's what we all wanna talk about. My two cents? In hell, the temperature never changes. Ever. So that means cold as hell...and hot as hell...are the same thing!"

"How would you know?" challenged Marcus. "You ever been there?"

"In my house," Tara replied dramatically, "the temperature is always the same, because the 'rents refuse to adjust the thermostat. They literally have figured out how to glue the dial in place exactly at 65 degrees. Therefore, the temperature never changes. And that's just the beginning of all the tyrannical shit they do. So, I live in hell, and in hell the temperature never changes, so cold as hell and hot as hell are the same thing. So there!" She sat back and waited for a witty response.

Rocky thought about what Tara had said for a few seconds, before slowly saying, "Wait a minute...this feels like one of those stupid logic questions like they have on those pocket IQ tests they sell in museum gift shops. Or maybe that one I got in Algebra 2 the other day, the one that tries to make it look like a=b leads to a≠b and challenges you to save all of algebra and prove that wrong, but there's really no way to actually prove it and-"

Axel slapped Rocky upside the back of the head to make him stop rambling on and on. "Good God, how can we be related?" he groused. "My twin brother gets us arguing about cold as hell or hot as hell, and my little brother tries to confuse us with impossible higher math...what the hell is happening to us?"

Ashley and Tim looked at each other. "Wow, all this from a simple and perfectly reasonable question," he said.

"You devious little chaotician, you," giggled Ashley, ruffling Tim's fuzzy dirty-blond hair. "Wow, this hair just won't go flat, will it?"

"If my hair goes flat," Tim pronounced theatrically, "that means the apocalypse is upon us."

"So in two months your beautiful perpetual static bed head will be no more?" Ashley groaned, as if Tim were actually being serious. "Aww. Better get a picture before it's too late!"

At this point, the waiter arrived with the Lethal Tomatoes' lunches. He turned to the Green Club table and apologized once again for the delay, saying the propane ovens were fired up but they could only cook two meals at a time, so they might have to get their food in staggered deliveries. The Tomatoes offered to wait to eat their lunches until all their friends were served, but the Green Clubbers (and Lucien, but not Axel, impolite as ever) insisted that the Tomatoes go ahead and eat. While the others ate different flavors of parmigiana (veal for Ashley, chicken for Bobby, and eggplant for Tara), Tim chowed down on chicken pesto with shaved white truffles, and he offered to pay for the same lunch for everyone if they ever came back to Garibaldi's. Ashley heartily agreed after getting a sample of the intensely tasty delicacy ("but only if we come back tomorrow," she said, "because the truffles are only available for a very limited time"), and Tim even decided to share out most of the rest of the truffles with the rest, leaving himself only two tiny shavings to let dissolve on his tongue. It was really sad that he was paying so much money and he wouldn't get to enjoy all the earthy savor of the imported Italian fungi. _But hey__, at least the others got to enjoy their taste of it_, thought Tim. _And wow, that is some amazing chicken pesto, even without the truffles. That really makes up for it in spades_.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Minutes after the power went out in the underground lab, Vexen hurriedly rifled through the cabinet in the break room and managed to break out a number of flashlights, which she immediately turned on, tossed to Ansem and Braig, and illuminated the pitch-black lab. Well, not quite pitch-black. The preservation pod's green keypad remained lit up. Ansem rushed over to it, tapped out the code on the keypad, and opened it up, revealing the glowing green interior with the heartless Ansem-doppelganger connected to all the pipes and tubes. Swearing under his breath (something both Vexen and Braig noticed, because it was totally unlike him to swear, especially that foully), he opened a small panel at the very top of the inner pod, right over the other Ansem's head, stuck his fingers in, and immediately released some red light from his fingertips into the glowing green gunge.

"Eww," groaned Vexen, disgusted by the sight. "Ansem, what exactly are you doing?"

Ansem frowned at his wife. "I'm trying to at least keep this pod online," he grunted, as the red light filled the green fluid, to the point where one couldn't even tell the original color anymore.

"I don't know about that," said Braig. "I'd advise you to save your strength, Ansem. Sure, those ethereal blades of yours can power anything and everything forever, but only if your strength lasts forever too, and..." His voice trailed off as he realized the superfluousness of what he was saying.

"And that is precisely why I will not ever use the ethereal blades to solve the energy crisis," said Ansem shortly. "Thank you, Captain Obvious." He pulled his hands away from the pod, and looked around. Then he realized something, and a troubled expression clouded his face. "Hang on a second...aren't we trapped down here?"

"Trapped?" asked Vexen nervously.

"Yes, trapped," repeated Ansem. "The power is out; you saw to that, didn't you? And without the power, we can't get into the elevator and get out of here. And it's all your fault, Vexen! You and your stupid, worthless experiment! I should have known the independent generator wasn't ready to work by itself! But you probably did, and you just didn't tell me so you could sabotage the plans, and now we won't be able to open the In-Between on Halloween! Thanks a million, Vexen!"

"Stop it - _stop it_ - STOP IT!" yelled Braig. "Stop fighting like this! It's not gonna get us out of here, and it's really not worth it to blame each other for this. None of us could have foreseen this happening. Ansem, I know you like to try to make sure you know everything and anything that's gonna happen in advance, but you just can't! And Vexen's only doing what you told her anyway! Just...stop it. Please."

Ansem sighed. "Okay, Braig. We'll stop fighting...if you can propose that we do something about this."

Braig immediately said, "Well, for starters, howsabout we get out of here? We don't need the elevator. I can just teleport us!"

Vexen adjusted her glasses. "I really don't know about that. Have you ever teleported another person with you before?"

"He teleported me once," said Ansem.

"But wasn't that just from one room to the next?" asked Vexen.

"No," said Braig. "I teleported him to my office and back. Three floors apart."

Vexen sighed. "Still, that's a really short distance, so...are you absolutely sure you can manage it? Can you definitely teleport us up to the first floor of the house?"

"How deep underground are we again?" Braig asked. Vexen groaned loudly.

"Come on, Vexen, don't be afraid," said Ansem. "If I could phase people through walls, I'd do that, but unfortunately I can't. Braig's plan is the best we've got. Have faith in him. It will work."

Vexen sighed again. "I guess. Okay."

Ansem turned to Braig. "Okay then, take me up first. You can stay up there with us until the power comes back, but for the love of all things holy, stay hidden. We can't afford to have some random paparazzo look into our living room window only to spot a high-profile fugitive sitting on our sofa. If I need to go back down and check on the pod, I'll just do that myself, I won't need you to take me back down there. Got it?"

Braig nodded. "All right. You ready?"

"Ready," said Ansem.

"Oh no," moaned Vexen. "I can't look." She turned away and buried her head in her arms as Braig took Ansem's hand, closed his eyes, and vanished, taking her husband with him.

Two seconds passed.

Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Vexen broke out in a sweat despite the chill in the lab, as her nervousness increased exponentially with each tick of her internal clock. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.

After exactly thirteen seconds, Braig reappeared and took Vexen's hand. "Wait a minute, Braig, oh no, stop it, please don't do this, I don't wanna die..." They vanished from the lab.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Within about half an hour of the power outage starting, the Green Clubbers, plus Axel and Lucien, were given their meals, with more apologies from the eternally apologetic waiter. (Ashley told Tim that that waiter was very notorious for his, in her eloquent words, "obsequious ass kissage.") Everybody continued eating in silence for about a minute or so, before Tim finished his deliciously expensive lunch and looked around. _No sign of the power coming back on anytime soon_, he thought. _And if the weather is that bad that it knocked out the power, I don't think we should risk going outside._ He turned to the rest of the Lethal Tomatoes and said as much to them. Unsurprisingly, they agreed that it would be a very bad idea to leave the building until the storm had passed. They guessed that, even with the heavy ice and snow, it would blow over very quickly, like all the (rain) storms that typically hit the California coast at this time of year. Hopefully. As had been repeatedly stated by the meteorologists on the morning news, ice storms in this part of the country were a once-in-heaven-knows-how-many-lifetimes event.

In the meantime, though, there was really nothing they could think to do off the top of their heads, so they merely sat there looking bored for a few minutes. The Green Clubbers looked at them, then at each other, then resumed sitting there looking bored themselves. Most surprisingly, it was Rocky, who was typically so very quiet and reserved, and the last to intentionally and deliberately socialize with anyone (even less likely to do so than Tim, who was no slouch in the shyness department himself), who actually thought of something to do.

And so he decided to do just what he'd thought to do.

Rocky climbed onto the table, took a breath, and started singing an a capella version of his favorite song: "Freak the Freak Out." Axel buried his head in his hands, looking embarrassed to be seen with a guy singing Victoria Justice, even if said guy was his little brother, and said little brother was hopelessly crushed out on Victoria Justice and sang this song in the shower every day. Tim had heard Rocky doing this enough times to know that his little brother had a great singing voice, the kind that doesn't mimic the sound of mass-produced Auto-Tune bubblegum pop and therefore would never pass muster on _American Idol_. Tim cheered for Rocky as he launched into the chorus, for which he punctuated every word by jumping onto the next table. Then he started humming along in a close approximation of "Freak"'s bass line. Soon, Xion started adding to the rhythm by pounding on the table - in a real frenzy, too, like an actual rock drummer. _Like Ashley's doing_, thought Tim, as she proceeded to join in by table drumming alongside Xion. Bobby completed the a capella ensemble with beatboxing. _Cliched, and outdated_, thought Tim, _but at least he's carrying the tune very well, sort of. Not like you can actually carry a tune beatboxing. That's not possible, right? Yeah, I didn't think so._

Once the song was over (and Rocky was going back to his own table and gulping down water to soothe his throat, which had been scoured slightly by the high notes), everyone looked around the restaurant. People were staring at Rocky and the rest of the improvisers, apparently not sure what to think.

Then, there was a loud cry of "BRAVO!" from the entrance to the kitchen, where a young waitress, no more than eighteen, had put down the plate of spaghetti Bolognese she was about to deliver so she could clap for the spontaneous performance. Slowly but surely, the applause spread around the dining room like wildfire, along with cries of "Wonderful!" and "Awesome!" and "Do it again!" followed by an extremely insistent "Encore!"

Tim and Rocky looked at each other, shocked that the impromptu performance had actually gotten such a good reception. Tim had known that it was great - the array of colored notes in his sight field had told him so - but he had learned that his taste in music was very...tasteful, but unfortunately it was the opposite of normal. _Or, at least, what passes for normal in this day and age. Normal is bad. Normal is talentless. Most of the time, anyway_.

Tim asked Rocky, "So, looks like they loved it. You wanna go again?"

Rocky shook his head. "I can't, Tim, I don't know the lyrics to any more songs!"

Axel laughed. "You love Victoria Justice to death but you can only sing one of her songs from memory?! What kind of fanboy are you?"

Tim put his hand on Rocky's shoulder. "Relax. You're not the only one around here with a voice. And, if the lyrics come back to you while I sing, feel free to join me. In fact," he followed his little brother's example, climbed onto the table, looked around, and spoke to the whole room, "everyone's free to sing along with me if you know the words! Not that I expect you to know them, this is kind of a deep cut I'm gonna do for us." Sure enough, only a small handful of others knew the words to Sara Bareilles' "Morningside," but with Xion, Ashley, Rocky, and Bobby backing Tim up, the whole restaurant was soon dancing and clapping along with the bouncy, almost jazzy song.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Braig reappeared in the pitch-black underground lab and took Vexen's hand so he could teleport her back up to the house, exactly the way he had done for Ansem thirteen seconds earlier. "Wait a minute, Braig," the increasingly frightened Vexen moaned, "oh no, stop it, please don't do this, I don't wanna die..." They vanished from the lab before she could finish her string of complaints.

Exactly one second later, they reappeared together in the middle of the living room on the first floor of the Nemos' house. Vexen immediately broke away from Braig and dusted herself off, then started inspecting herself for missing body parts. Eventually, she sighed, as she was forced to conclude that Braig's teleportation had not relieved her of any vital organs. _Then again, it had to have worked,_ she thought, _otherwise Ansem would have phased whatever was left of him downstairs and done his damnedest to strangle Braig to death._

Vexen blushed noticeably, as she now realized her fears of Braig's ability were completely unfounded. To hide her embarrassment as best she could, she walked into the kitchen and dug a few foods out of the fridge, mostly the kind of perishable foods that would go bad if they were left un-refrigerated for too long. Rubbery provolone cheese, processed meats, milk, other foods that were on the second-highest level of the (long since outdated) Food Guide Pyramid. _And do we have a lot of these foods, _Vexen groused internally. _Thank you so very much, Atkins. Fat lot of good that diet of yours did for you, let alone my family. This is not how people are supposed to eat._ She busied herself making random sandwiches of deli ingredients arranged in whatever combinations came about - she didn't care as long as they were being eaten. _Then again,_ she thought, _maybe the temperature inside the house will be low enough that we won't have to worry about anything spoiling on us anytime soon._

She returned to the living room with two plates in hand (a third, covered in a completely messed-up sandwich which she'd repeatedly dropped on the counter and on the floor as she was shivering and struggling to keep her grasp on the various ingredients, she'd decided to leave for herself, while the others she made were considerably cleaner and less unstable), then looked around as she realized there was only one other person in the room. "You sent Braig upstairs or something? Already?" she asked Ansem. He merely nodded, and gestured upstairs. Vexen climbed the stairs up to the top floor, where Braig was hugging his knees for warmth, while sitting on the chair in front of her home office (which was entirely for show, although it was still fully functional, should anyone come along and want to see it in operation.) She handed him his sandwich, and she left and descended back to the first floor, where she picked up her own sandwich and sat across from Ansem on the sofa.

Ansem looked out of the corner of his eye at Vexen's sorry excuse for a sandwich. "Did you fumble the ingredients in the cold or something?" he asked.

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I did," said Vexen testily. "Even a cryokinetic like myself loses a bit of fine motor skills in the cold."

"A bit?" chortled Ansem. "I don't even know if that can be called a sandwich anymore."

Vexen sighed. "It was meant for you, you know. But I dropped everything everywhere, so I put it aside and made you a fresh one. See the provolone? Since when do I ever eat provolone?"

"Since now, clearly," responded Ansem. "And you know what else has been happening since now? Our lab now has no power. Our independent generator doesn't generate enough power for the lab, so it would be totally useless when we open the In-Between. I suppose Braig can spend a few days trying to fix it. It's not like he has anything else to do down there."

Vexen asked, "But we won't have any chance of opening it on Halloween?"

Ansem sighed. "No. But then, as mystical as that day is, it's not a full moon day. It came close this year, but no cigar. Hopefully, next month we'll be able to do so. But I'm going to need another test done first, once the generator is fixed."

"What kind of test?" Vexen asked.

"I think you know what kind," said Ansem.

Vexen nodded, as she understood what Ansem was talking about. "But that sort of thing can be done in, what, four days from now? How come the generator won't be ready for Halloween?"

"Because," said Ansem, "I'm going to have to add ethereal blades to it every day for nine days before I fire up the gateway. Unfortunately, that deadline will pass by this Monday if we plan to open it on Halloween, so we will almost certainly have to wait until the next full moon."

Vexen thought about it for a second. "November 27. Such a long way away."

Ansem smiled to her. "Not as long as you think. Remember, dear, always have faith."

Vexen nodded, her face clouding over as she contemplated both the revised plans for the opening of the In-Between, and then distracted herself from this troubling subject by gazing at the complete mess of a sandwich she was about to eat. _Dear God, I hate provolone,_ she thought sadly.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Several minutes went by and still there was no power in Garibaldi's, so Tim and his friends continued their improvised musical routine. After a selection of random songs - Tim even took requests, so long as either he or Rocky knew the words to the song - they started asking their fellow diners what they should do for them next.

"How about some stand-up?" asked one of them hopefully.

"Really?" asked Tim. "Well, I don't know about you, but I can't really do stand-up. Believe me, I've tried, and every time I try, I corpse."

"What is that?" asked the diner.

"You know, it's when I start laughing at my own jokes," said Tim. "Doesn't sound very flattering, does it?" He turned to the rest of the Lethal Tomatoes. "Right? Can any of you do stand-up without breaking into laughter?" They all started laughing their heads off themselves, before shaking them no. "None of you either?" Tim asked the Green Clubbers, who responded exactly the same way, as did Lucien (but not Axel, who had simply shrunk back into his seat, in supreme embarrassment.) "And this isn't very funny by itself, is it?" Tim asked the other diners, who politely chuckled in reply. He then took a look around at the group of people around him, and asked, "There's no children here, right?"

"No...why?" asked one of the waiters.

Tim smiled. "I've got a bit of an improv comedy idea in mind...with maybe a bit of off-color humor to go along with it." He looked at everyone and intoned his next sentence as seriously as possible. "Can you handle it?" The rest of the diners nodded. "Good!" said Tim, clapping his hands. "Give me a second...and on we go!"

He turned to Bobby and asked him a question, which was inspired by one that he'd once read in Sand City, on his old chemistry teacher's "365 Stupidest Things Ever Said" desk calendar. "You there, young man - do you masticate a lot?" A few people in the audience tittered as their gutter minds immediately played with and twisted Tim's words.

Bobby promptly answered, "Why yes, I should think I do, my good sir." The laughter increased.

"So what do you think about while you masticate?" asked Tim, keeping the routine going.

Bobby gamely followed along and said, succinctly, "Food."

"What kinds of food?"

"Whatever I can see in front of me," said Bobby.

"So you say thinking about food puts you in a very happy place?" asked Tim.

"Definitely," said Bobby.

Tim shrugged. "Well, whatever floats your boat, I guess." The diners laughed their heads off as Tim moved on to Ashley and started another routine based on a very similar joke from his old teacher's calendar. "You there, fine young woman," he said, "do you have a boyfriend?"

Ashley grabbed a lock of her hair and began sucking on it, in order to look like a cute, innocent little girl. "I'm working on getting one," she said.

Tim smirked. "And if said potential boyfriend happened to own a shuttlecock and you found him using it? What would you do and/or say?"

"Gosh, mister," said Ashley, "that sounds like something too dirty to even think about in mixed company." More laughter echoed across the room.

Tim turned to Marcus and said, "You, sir, I shall use to demonstrate my patented hypnosis method." He pulled out his cell phone and turned the screen on. "Stare deeply into the screen until your eyes glaze over, and then...well, we'll get to that." Giggles and chortles as Marcus complied, stared at the screen, and then his eyes closed.

"Good," said Tim. "Now, climb onto the table and lie on your stomach. Guys, make room for him," he instructed the Green Clubbers, having them move their plates over to allow Marcus to lie on the table as "directed." "Now, you and your girlfriend - and you do have one now, at least in your mind - are, shall we say, hula-ing horizontally." Tim paused to let the laughs go by. "But, there is one little twist to this particular dance - you learned the ladies' part. So what is your girlfriend doing now? Tell us!"

Marcus groaned, as if in pain, then cried "_Yamette! Atashi oshiri itai!_"

"Well now!" Tim looked around in "shock." "What are these exotic foreign words you speak?"

Xion giggled, then piped up, "If I'm not mistaken, he just said, 'Stop! My ass hurts!' in Japanese." More laughter.

"Interesting," said Tim. "Now I think it is time to end this. Sir," he said to Marcus, "get off the table and stand in front of me." Marcus obeyed. "Now, in order to return to normal, all you need to do is do three jumping jacks, then spread your arms in as ridiculous and theatrical a manner as possible."

Tim actually conducted these actions along with Marcus, and as soon as they spread their arms, almost miraculously, the power came back.

While it was purely a spontaneous coincidence, the audience laughed louder than ever, and applauded loudly as the little performance ended with Tim and everyone else who took part in the show holding hands and bowing like actors.

"Thank you, everybody!" cried Tim. "We'll be here all weekend! Not all week. We got school, you understand." Laughter echoed across the restaurant for the last time in this dark lunch hour.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Ansem ate his sandwich quickly, carried his plate into the kitchen, washed it, and then came back to the living room to speak to Vexen. "I'm going back down to the lab for a few minutes," said Ansem. "I will need to make sure I don't need to re-power the preservation pod," he said. "I might have to actually do so, though. So don't wait for me." He shifted his weight slightly and then disappeared into the floor, as if an invisible hole had just appeared there.

Vexen, meanwhile, picked miserably at the god-awful mess of a sandwich she had made. _Screw it_, she thought. _There is absolutely no way I'm going to eat this. Why the hell does Ansem have to eat this shitty provolone and fat-adella, anyway? And more importantly, why the hell did I convince myself to try and eat it?_ She dumped the contents of her plate down the drain in the sink, and was on the point of turning on the garbage disposal when she remembered. _Oh wait, the power's out, and it's my fault. Right,_ Vexen grumbled to herself. _Ansem was right, as usual. Right to treat me like an asshole_.

She remembered that she was coming onto the interval where she was supposed to wave her hands around her head in order to keep the storm going. But she was considering not doing so this time. _Wasn't Ansem's little idea of a test meant to ensure the generator would work?_ she thought. _And now the generator doesn't work, so doesn't that mean it's okay to just let the storm die out so the power can come back?_ Unfortunately, at the moment, Ansem was down in the lab and she was unable to access it at the moment, so she would be forced to make the decision on her own initiative. _Ansem isn't gonna like this,_ she thought ruefully. _He always likes to make the decisions on his own, never lets anyone else decide for him. Well, screw that and screw him too. I am not gonna keep this storm going for him any longer. He's got the answer he needs._ She sat back and watched out the window as the wind continued blowing for a split second.

And then it stopped. The snow stopped, too. _Well, that's that_, Vexen thought. She went upstairs to collect Braig's plate from him, and she took it downstairs to wash it. _Ugh, stupid garbage disposal's still not gonna turn on_, she thought. _Well, I guess desperate times call for desperate measures._

She went back up to her room, grabbed her wool coat and rain boots, told Braig she was going next door for a moment, and went out the door. She mounted the steps in front of the second townhouse, carefully vaulted the front gate since the doorbell was not working, and then knocked on the door. Enzo Lessico answered, a large Latin-English dictionary in his hands.

"Vexen?" he asked. "Don't tell me that awful chill was your doing."

"Yeah, yeah," Vexen blathered, waving her hands indifferently. "I need to talk to Lara, right away."

"Hold on a second," the short bluish-silver haired man answered. He turned towards the stairs and called out, "Lara! Vexen's here to see you!"

Lara Savage walked down the stairs as Vexen came in and removed her boots. "Vexen? Did you try and freeze us all today?"

"Yes, I did," grumbled Vexen. "Ansem's idea, of course. I need to talk to you, Lara. In private," she added. Enzo took the message and went up the stairs with his brick-sized book.

As soon as he was gone, Vexen turned to Lara and said, "Okay, let's cut the crap. You both knew this was happening today, so don't act like it's such an inconvenience."

Lara frowned. "Who said it was an inconvenience?"

"But that's not what I'm here to talk about," said Vexen. "See, the generator failed to come online as planned. So Ansem's down there, trying to keep that stupid preservation pod working with his ethereal blades. Long story short, I need the electricity working again, yesterday."

"So..."

Vexen groaned. "Get a clue, Lara! I need you to put the lights back on already!"

Lara chewed her lip. "Are you sure I can do that? Maybe your ice storm knocked down the power lines."

Vexen took a look out the window. "Look, Lara, see? No downed power lines, not here, anyway. I think you can easily regenerate the electricity for at least this part of town."

"Fine," sighed Lara. "Just give me a second to get ready." She entered the kitchen, opened one of the drawers, and picked up four seemingly ordinary steak knives which she held in her hands, two each. Then she raised the knives and pointed them out the window. "Open it for me, please," she said. Vexen opened the window slightly, allowing Lara to stick the knives outside just enough to angle them towards the power lines.

Seconds later, little sparks of electricity popped off around Lara's hands, and up the knife blades, arcing towards the power lines. It took almost a minute, but Lara was soon able to amass enough power to reach the power lines, at which point the electricity arced across the sky.

At this point, the lights came back on. Vexen turned to Lara and said, "Okay, thanks. Now shut the window before someone sees you." _And now I can go back home and eliminate that awful cheese and meat taking up space in the garbage disposal_, she thought. _At freaking last._


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

The manager of Garibaldi's insisted that Tim and his friends get their meals for free as a result of the warm reception they got in the cold restaurant, but Tim eventually talked the man into letting them pay - although at a considerably lower price, which they made up for by leaving a much larger tip than usual. They then left the restaurant, along with everyone else who had stayed during the blackout, just as a new crop of off-peak hours customers started filing in. While Axel and Lucien split off from the Green Clubbers to do their own thing, and Tara and Bobby walked over to the nearby library to do a little research for an anatomy project (the task at hand was cat dissection), Tim walked Ashley back to her place.

"Well," said Ashley, "that was a lot more fun than any of us ever expected."

"Tell me about it," said Tim. "Us poor teenagers, we find everything and anything to be inescapably boring."

"Not quite everything," said Ashley, almost slyly.

"So who's the lucky dude?" asked Tim.

"Huh?" said Ashley.

"Well, unless you were lying about working on getting-" Tim suddenly stopped, because Ashley had unexpectedly leaned over and kissed him on the lips.

"Whoa," said Tim. "Uh..."

"That's for the entertainment," said Ashley. She kissed him again. "That's for the taste of the truffles." And again. "And that one is just because."

Tim didn't speak. His brain was utterly fried by Ashley's sudden display of affection.

"You just gonna stand there or are you gonna say something?" Ashley asked.

"Uh..." Tim stopped, then spoke up again as his brain re-wired around the blown circuitry. "Okay, where's the hidden cameras?"

"Hidden cameras?"

"Yeah, like on a TV show," said Tim. "If there are hidden cameras, our day would have made a great bottle episode."

Ashley laughed. "Okay, Abed. You wanna geek out any more? Am I gonna have to take back that kiss?"

"How would you do that?" asked Tim.

Ashley tapped the skin right next to her eye. "Trade secret," she said cryptically.

"Guess I'm not the only funny one around here," said Tim. He kissed Ashley on the lips. "That's for making me laugh." He kissed her again. "That's for keeping my inner geek in check." And again. "And that one comes for no reason, other than I really am enjoying the taste of your veal parmigiana breath."

"No! Really?" asked Ashley.

"I'm part-Italian," said Tim. "That taste is a real turn-on for us. Especially if, like me, you're more Italian than half the cast of _Jersey Shore._" He hugged Ashley, they said good-bye, and he walked back towards his house.

* * *

As it happened, there were hidden cameras dotting the neighborhood where Ashley lived. And they weren't the beneficial, protect-the-people-from-harm _Person of Interest_ variety. They were run directly to the computers in Ansem's lab, and he was watching the live feed of the street near Ashley's house.

Ansem smirked at the screen. He thought, _Okay there, Tim. Have fun making a girlfriend. Too bad you won't get to spend more than the next month with her_. He closed the window, then walked over to the elevator so he could collect Braig and bring him back down to the lab.

-END OF EPISODE 4-


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